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I was born in July 1935. In April 1941 we were bombed from our council house on St. Helier Estate,Surrey/South London. I had measles so my mother, 13 year-old sister and I were spending the night in the coal-cupboard under the stairs, rather than risk taking me out to the corrugated iron Anderson shelter helf-sunk into the earth of the back garden. Four bombs fell (one killing the milking goat which was kept next door - people went to amazing lengths to supplement the rations). My father was 42 then (ex Royal Marine WW1) and away on a contract in Bedford - he worked on jointing high-tension cables all over the country, sometimes at secret locations, during the war. So there were just the three of us when the bombs fell and my mother threw herself across us. I remember waking to see sky and stars above me. Eventually an ARP warden cleared a way to get us out through the front passage.

Now here is what a 5-year-old girl was thinking in such circumstances:
I was being carried in the warden's arms across the rubble thinking how grateful I was to be wearing, for the first time, the hand-me-down nightie I had got from my sister, with the puff sleeves with the yellow rosebuds on. So much better-looking than the shabby thing I had been wearing the night before. And what a mercy it was that I was fit to be seen by all these people (who were trying to get to the church hall and not fall into the bomb craters!).

Because I had infectious measles and couldn't go to the church hall, the warden kindly took us home to his wife and daughter in their own Anderson shelter. As daylight came my mother tentatively mentioned that her upper arm had swollen up so she couldn't remove her coat. Her injured arm needed 10 weeks of hospital treatment. We think she had the front door lock blasted into it, which would otherwise have gone through my sister's face if my mother's arm had not been across it.

The next morning I was given a dress by the ARP warden's daughter - a 'Shirley Temple' pink silk one with the entire skirt made of frills from waist to hem. I remember standing barefoot on a floor covered with broken glass, but admiring myself in my pink frock in a still unbroken mirror which was leaning against a wall. Eventually I got so many 'Shirley Temple' clothes as hand-me-downs that I believed she was a remote relation of ours!

(Our Anderson shelter was flattened completely that night.)

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